Previously on Zhymballa
The heroes arrive at Pelor’s Academy and they convince Mabur, the headmaster, to lend them some paladins in exchange of the heroes finding out what happened to two missing brothers who should have arrived days ago. The heroes start the search right away because of the heavy snowstorm that is buffeting the region.
During their search, the heroes find a cave with a pentagram and poisonous plants but with no people.

Previously on Zhymballa
The heroes frustrate two attempts to kill Davos and capture the assassins, two dragonborns members of a mercenary group hired by a Ridgeport merchant called Falgrom. On their way to Pelor’s Academy, up in the mountains, the group endures a strong snowstorm that doesn’t prevent them from reaching their destination.
Flash-back — “Bharash, you’re not a good dragonborn”
After setting his clan’s shrine on fire, a twelve year old Bharash gets scolded by his father who expels him from their village until the boy is willing to follow the clan’s rules.

Previously on Zhymballa
The heroes return Gighur and the rest of the kidnapped villagers to Rockbreach and they accept Minnesota’s offer to cleanse the abandoned monastery from goblins and undead in order to join The Caretakers Syndicate.
Getting more muscle
Still at the party, the heroes regroup to plan their attack. They barely escaped with Salazar, their tank, alive, so they decide to get more muscle at the Academy of Pelor, where Salazar trained to become a paladin.

Previously on Zhymballa
While exploring the caves below the abandoned monastery, the heroes rescue Gighur and seven other prisoners. While looking for an exit, the group meets a goblin who offers them a way out in exchange of the heroes killing as many undead as they can. The heroes accept, but the monastery is so packed with skeletons and zombies and they barely make it out alive.
The province of Ridgeport.

Previously on Zhymballa
Minnesota, a well-fed female dwarf, has hired the heroes to rescue her brother Gighur Shatterheat from a group of goblins. The heroes get their way into the goblin’s lair through a crate of full of corpses. After killing the goblins unloading the cargo, the heroes find the entrance to the crypts and explore it in full.
A presence in the walls
Til warns the group of a presence in the walls which then goes away.

Setup
Minnesota, a well-fed female dwarf, has hired a group of adventurers to rescue her brother Gighur Shatterheat from a clan of goblins that recently set up shop in the abandoned monastery near the lake. The group consists of Dawn, a male wood elf ranger; Salazar Astorio, a male human paladin; and Til Grassthorn, a male halfling rogue. The group has split to gather intel and secure a way into the goblin’s lair.

In the last 40 days I have spent 160 hours meditating and it’s been the best investment I’ve done in years. Here is why.
Earlier this year I came across an interview with Yuval Harari in which he talked about Vipassana, a meditation technique that he has been practicing for 17 years. I found it interesting that a lay person would spend two hours per day and a full month per year meditating, so I looked for more information and this is what I found: you learn the technique by attending a ten day course where all you do is meditate for ten hours a day.

A few days ago we went to Maienfeld to hike near the area that Johanna Spyri used as a setting for her 1881 novel, Heidi. Since I moved to Switzerland I been reminded of Heidi weekly because at work there is a weekly social event whose start gets announced with a broadcast of Heidi’s theme to the whole office. So when I saw that there was a hiking area named after her I talked to Loes and she agreed to go.

Atul Gawande explains on The New Yorker how to differentiate pseudoscience from real science. The main idea is that a lot of people mistrust science because they cannot tell the two apart. A compounding problem is that research shows that trying to debunk specific examples of pseudoscience doesn’t work to convince people to believe in the true facts (science). So how do we go about increasing knowledge and decreasing misinformation in ourselves and others?

What if a Lunar colony rebelled against Earth?
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (1966) is really a book about revolutions, colonialism and alternative family structures. There is some science fiction like the setting and the fact that one of the characters is an AI but they feel secondary to the main topics.
**WARNING: Spoilers alert**
The plot centers around a human Lunar colony that decides to rebel against Earth because it’s exploiting all of its resources.